The situation between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Paterson has been a complicated one. Mr. Cuomo is still haunted by the fierce backlash he stirred in 2002 when he decided to run in the Democratic primary for governor against H. Carl McCall, the first serious black candidate for governor.

Now, Mr. Cuomo effectively has the blessing of the nation’s first black president to run against New York’s first black governor.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine has moved several former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton off a key panel that will determine the party’s rules for selecting a presidential nominee.

After all, as the Daily News announced in the middle of last year’s primary

And therefore, not mine. Ever since I noticed they were throwing out my primary vote last year.

WTF?! Where is “President” Obama? Why doesn’t he want to answer questions about this situation? Yesterday, reporters asked him about it, and Obama gave a typically snotty response: “Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.”

we are being reassured by Politico that POTUS is updated on the situation

he White House says the president has received updates on paper and by phone on Saturday. Administration aides met at 8 a.m. and at 2 p.m. to discuss the four-day-old situation off the east coast of Africa.

Whew! For a second there I thought the US captain was in some kind of danger and no one cared….

If Congress approves the latest funding request, as expected, the Iraq war will have cost about $694 billion, making it the second most expensive conflict in U.S. history behind World War II.

Notably, more expensive than the war in Vietnam

Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam War cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4.1 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year.
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Some of that price tag must come – although the article doesn’t make the clear connection from the fact that

U.S. officials in Iraq also have relied heavily on private contractors, used to protect diplomats and defend bases, transport provisions and staff essential services such as providing food.

In other words, the war profiteers made it a much bigger bundle this time around.

That’s what a vast majority of state voters told the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute during a recent survey on the controversy surrounding her abruptly aborted candidacy for New York’s vacant seat in the Senate.

Forty-nine percent of those polled felt she and her aides were to blame, while 15 percent pointed the finger at Gov. David Paterson and his team. Twelve percent of voters surveyed felt both camps mishandled the situation.

The New Yorker summons Caroline’s friends – some of them pundits to give her side of the story. It’s an 8 pages defense with some very revealing moments . One of the most quoted advocate – and the only named source is Laurence O’Donnell from – where else? MSNBC who starts the ballgame by attacking Paterson

“And when they get into that phrase ‘not ready for prime time’? This is the ‘not ready for prime time’ governor you’re watching.”

As for Caroline Kennedy’s last-minute withdrawal, her friends were left to speculate. Had she suddenly panicked? Had she realized that she’d be signing on for more and more misery, of which the past few weeks had been just a foretaste? That her days would consist of drudgery—fund-raising phone calls, trudging up to frozen, decrepit towns she’d never heard of? That there would be no more leisurely summers in the Hamptons, no more spontaneous long lunches with friends, no more undisclosed finances? Had she realized, in short, that she wanted her old life back?

We get some highlights of the reception her entitlement got

Representative Gary Ackerman, of New York’s Fifth District, in Queens and Long Island, compared her to J. Lo. “One of the things that we have to observe is that DNA in this business can take you just so far,” Ackerman said, on “Face the Nation.” “You know, Rembrandt was a great artist. His brother Murray, on the other hand—Murray Rembrandt wouldn’t paint a house.”

We get details of her growing up, including “moments of greatness” as seen by her anonymous friends

She had moments of greatness: according to the biographer C. David Heymann, when the police discovered pot plants that her cousin David was growing in her back yard in Hyannis Port, she took the blame.

We get an idea about what her campaigning for Obama was like

Still, while she was campaigning for Obama, she was in control of her time. She wasn’t required to show up anywhere or do anything in particular: any amount of time she gave to him was a gift for which the campaign was grateful.

We get her state of mind before she was prodded to run

Before the Senate opportunity came along, she’d never been inclined to political arguments, never been one to pontificate about an issue. “I thought she understood her place in the culture,” one friend says. “If you asked her opinion on something, she would back off. She was comfortingly self-effacing.” And what if she lost? What if she didn’t get the job? That would be humiliating. Kennedys don’t like losers, Caroline Kennedy especially. “In the case of the Profiles in Courage awards, she’s made it clear in recent years that she doesn’t always want us to recognize people who are political losers,”

Al Sharpton, one of the few named sources, thought that betraying Hillary paid off for Caroline and got her a base – all based on a visit at Sylvia’s

Moreover, by endorsing Obama, at a time when it was not at all clear that he would win the primary, and from Hillary Clinton’s home state, Caroline Kennedy had won the allegiance of a younger constituency on her own behalf.

He said her reception in Harlem was more enthusiastic than Obama’s because people told him

‘No, man, she risked a lot for us.’

And we get a sample of her wonderful ‘sarcasm” with the media

When Wolf Blitzer, of CNN, asked her why Hillary Clinton was not formally vetted by Obama’s Vice-Presidential search committee, of which she was a member, Kennedy interrupted him.

But in the end, it seems, she could not give away the life she had. Despite all the work that her friends and supporters put into her bid, despite all the behind-the-scenes campaigning, despite all the fuss and the coverage and the lunches and the phone calls and the public-relations consultants, she decided that she would prefer not to.

I believe that. After all, I know it wasn’t her idea any more than W had the idea to go in politics. And I can only fantasize what it would have meant for the country if then too, the media and other unpleasantness would have made that other lazy loafer say: the hell with it, I like my life ad a rich man better…After all, no one asked Murray Rembrandt to paint.

I suppose that, even in the plutocracy we had become, a minimum amount of drive is required from the very rich. At least from the rich women that is, because elitism doesn’t exactly preclude sexism.